With the rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, more and more individuals are searching for answers for their own health needs. According to Pew, there are 7.5 million “health seekers” on the Internet everyday looking for health answers and slightly fewer people see physicians every day. Although there is more information available than ever before, that does not necessarily mean it is relevant information, or even quality information. With this flood of information now available, individuals are trying to learn more about themselves and examine their own health issues.
Most individuals are not trained medical practitioners. This leaves average individuals at a serious disadvantage when trying to learn more about their own health and health needs. They lack the true medical education and training to assist them in understanding more about their health; they often end up being drawn to a few common issues.
Average individuals also lack the medical expertise to properly determine what may or may not be a relevant piece of information when trying to learn more about their own health. Important symptoms and situations that may help individuals discover they may have a medical or psychiatric condition, or lead to a better understanding of themselves, are often overlooked because the symptoms or situations may seem irrelevant to them. Most users would not think that loss of body hair is a serious symptom unless they knew that it was an important symptom for those suffering from, for example, hypothyroidism. Since most users do not know about diseases, disorders, and conditions, they often rely on being led to issues and then applying their symptoms to issues to which they are led. Unfortunately, many of these issues to which individuals are led are often irrelevant.
Standard approaches are to separate psychological, physical, nutritional, etc., factors, compartmentalizing them. Symptoms overlap and are common in areas and in conditions. Rather than focusing on the disease model, health psychology focuses on health, wellness, and prevention. Health psychology is based on a biological, psychological, sociological, medical model. If people can assess themselves, capture their own health information, find patterns and habits and make changes, they can alter their health and increase the likelihood of wellness and prevention.
If individuals choose to report information to their physicians, even if they are armed with information about themselves, their chances for conveying that information to their physicians are slim. The average time an individual has to spend with a physician is now between 4 and 6 minutes. That means, the individual must express everything he or she is currently feeling and thinking about, plus convey his or her medical, personal, and family history in a period of time that is only slightly longer than the average television commercial break.
Physicians are well aware that most individuals lack the medical knowledge to communicate their issues meaningfully to them. Physicians are under a great deal of pressure to make a diagnosis in the shortest possible time and are also aware that there are other individuals awaiting their care. Because of this pressure, and because physicians do not expect to receive much information from individuals without being prompted, individuals will have, on average, only 12 seconds before they are interrupted by their physicians.
With such factors taken into consideration, it is increasingly difficult for physicians to make accurate, timely, and cost-effective diagnoses for the individuals in their care and for their patients to “buy into” their treatment plans.